As grudge matches go, they don't come much tougher than tonight's crunch World Cup encounter between Germany and Poland. There is a lot at stake. Should the Germans defeat their neighbours once again, then Germany is virtually guaranteed a place in the second round. And if Poland crash to another World Cup humiliation - following their lacklustre 2-0 defeat over the weekend to Ecuador - then the Polish players might as well go home now.

But tonight's group A game in Dortmund is about more than just football. There are of course plenty of sound historical reasons why relations between Germany and Poland should be fraught. But there are a few other reasons as well. In the run-up to tonight's encounter the German press has been full of stories about Polish hooligans, suggesting that of all the fans coming to the World Cup the Polish hooligans are the most dangerous - even worse than England fans.

The stories took root after a group of Polish and German hooligans arranged a meeting in a forest late last year just over the German-Polish border. The two rival groups than started beating each other up with baseball bats and knuckle dusters. The police arrived on the rustic scene minutes later - escorting the bloodied Poles back across the border in a battered bus.

So far, though, the Polish hooligan threat to the World Cup appears to have been exaggerated. The Polish fans in Germany have behaved peacefully. Thousands of German police and officials, meanwhile, will be on duty in Dortmund tonight to ensure that the game goes off without incident.

In the run-up to the match the German press has confidently predicted that victory is all but certain. This morning's Bild even ran a front-page photo of Germany's coach Jürgen Klinsmann beneath the headline 'Klinski, Putz die Polski!' - Klinsmann, wipe the floor with the Poles. This is pretty insulting stuff - not least because, as everyone knows in Germany, Polish cleaning ladies do indeed clean the floors in millions of German households.

The insult is made worse by the fact that two of Germany's most gifted players - striker Miroslav Klose and his partner in attack Lukas Podolski- were both born in Poland. They could have played for Poland. Instead they elected to represent Germany, a country whose recent relations with Poland have been complicated by a Russian-German gas pipeline deal which has deeply angered Warsaw, and Poland's rightwing Eurosceptic government.

The chances of Poland winning tonight's grudge match are slim. But one can understand the players' willingness to do everything they can to restore Polish national pride.